The Origin EON15-X is a high-end gaming laptop that delivers strong processing power and serious gaming performance.

Want a high-end gaming laptop that does more than empty your wallet? The Origin EON15-X (starts at $1,667; $2,579 as tested) delivers gaming performance and heavy-hitting processing power, thanks to a top-of-the-line Nvidia graphics card and a potent, desktop-class Intel CPU. With more power than midrange ultraportable systems and a price that undercuts our leading premium gaming rig, the Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X, the EON15-X isn't just a serious competitor in the online arena, it's also our Editors' Choice high-end gaming laptop.

Design and Features
The EON15-X is a gaming laptop of the old school, before slim ultraportables, like the Maingear Pulse 15 or the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K, came along. The laptop measures 1.4 by 15.2 by 10.3 inches (HWD), and it's hefty, weighing 7.5 pounds. While that's lighter than the giant MSI GT80 Titan SLI (9.9 pounds), it's also a lot smaller, with a 15.6-inch display, compared with the MSI GT80's giant 18.4-inch. A lot of that thickness is to accommodate the cooling fans inside, which are a necessary evil, thanks to the system's desktop-class processor.

The display is pretty good, a 15.6-inch panel with a matte-finish and full HD (1,920-by-1,080) resolution. While other systems offer higher-resolution displays, like the 2,880-by-1,620 screens found on the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K and the Maingear Pulse 15, we've found that in laptops, the graphics hardware required to support 3K or higher just isn't quite there, making standard full HD resolution the better option for gaming laptops. There's also no touch capability, which you may want in order to really take advantage of Windows 8.1. The accompanying audio sounds good, thanks to a Soundblaster X-Fi 3 sound card.

The chiclet-style keyboard features customizable multi-colored backlighting, with three distinct lighting zones. The touchpad offers gesture support for Windows 8, with separate clickable buttons and a built-in fingerprint reader for secure logins. Just below the touchpad, on the front edge of the chassis, is a glowing-red stripe, which accents the matte-black of the laptop's soft-touch finish.

There's a wide selection of ports, spread out across the right, left, and back sides of the system. On the right, you'll find a Kensington lock slot, one USB 3.0 port, and audio connections for headphone, microphone, S/PDIF output, and line-in audio. On the left are three more USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a USB 2.0/eSATA combo port, and an SD card slot. The Gigabit Ethernet pairs well with the system's Intel PRO Wireless AC 7265 module, which provides both dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 support.

On the back, situated between two large exhaust vents, you'll find two DisplayPorts and an HDMI-out port, along with a four-pin Power connector. I generally dislike pinned connectorsthey need to plugged in with the proper alignment, and can be prone to damagebut it works just fine on a system that's likely to be stationary.

For storage, the EON15-X is equipped with a 240GB solid-state drive (SSD), which functions as a boot drive, and has speedier-than-normal performance, thanks to a PCIe M.2 connection, which offers faster data transfer than older SATA-connected drives. For bigger storage, however, the system is also outfitted with a 1TB hybrid drive, which combines a regular hard drive with SSD storage for boosted performance. Aside from the preinstalled copy of Windows 8.1 and Nvidia's GeForce Experience, which includes drives and extra recording and streaming functions for the graphics card, the system is free of any extraneous software. Origin covers the EON15-X with a one-year warranty that includes part replacement, along with a 45-day "No Dead Pixel" guarantee for the screen, 45-day free shipping for warranty repairs, and free lifetime tech support.

Performance
There are plenty of gaming laptops out there boasting about Intel Core i7 processors, but the EON15-X does have a thing or two to crow about. For starters, the 4GHz Intel Core i7-4790K isn't just a quad-core powerhouse, it's a desktop-class CPUthe same Devil's Canyon chipset is used in the Digital Storm Bolt II desktop. Pair that with 16GB of RAM and the system's PCI-connected SSD, and the performance is head and shoulders above competing systems, with leading scores in PCMark 8 Work Conventional (3,900 points) and Cinebench R15 (863 points), and category-topping performance in Handbrake (57 seconds) and Photoshop (2 minutes 28 seconds). In terms of pure processing power, the EON15-X mops the floor with the competition.

But in a gaming system, graphics performance is perhaps more important than raw processing power. With a single Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics card, the EON15-X does offer impressive performance, cranking out playable frame rates in our gaming tests at Extreme-quality settings at full 1080p resolution. The EON15-X managed 53 frames per second (fps) in Heaven and 59fps in Valley, which is on par with the Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X. Obviously you'll get better performance from a dual-GPU system, like the MSI GT80 Titan SLI, but that extra performance comes at a premium price.

Finally, there's the issue of battery life. Considering that the EON15-X is outfitted with a desktop-class processor and a high-performance GPU, it should be no surprise that battery life isn't spectacular. At 2 hours 24 minutes on our battery rundown test, it trails behind competing systems, but even the longest lived, the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K, only managed 3:17.

Conclusion
The Origin EON15-X is a well-made gaming rig with excellent performance, thanks to a roster of high-end components, like a desktop-class Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia's current top-of-the-line notebook GPU, and a combination of SSD and hard drive storage for fast performance and large capacity. It's a killer gaming rig, and between the faster performance and lower price, it's enough to replace the Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X as our Editors' Choice high-end gaming laptop.

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About the Author

Brian Westover is an Analyst for the Hardware Team, reviewing laptops, desktops, and storage devices.
As a child, Brian was frequently asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?" His answer alternated between Superman and Batman. This was cute when he was five, but worrisome at seventeen. Naturally, he is now a journalist, writing about tec... See Full Bio

Origin EON15-X

Origin EON15-X

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